Random Access Creativity

First off, let me be perfectly honest: this post is mostly a placeholder to keep my millions of loyal fans entertained while I think up something interesting to write about. I suppose I could just cut-and-paste something out of my travel journal or inflict a few lines of my rotten poetry on you, but you're good people and you deserve some original material. If I start doing that stuff this early it'll become a habit.

A problem arises for me with any creative endeavor that requires regular upkeep: I'm a space cadet. I don't think in linear fashion. I always have half a dozen different projects going at once, yet I'm no multi-tasker. At any given time, I have four or five short story ideas percolating in my mind and two or three in various stages of completion. I also have a couple of unfinished novels, unfinished because I have progressed so much as a writer since I started them that I eventually realized how bad they are. One is slowly evolving into a webcomic, for which I am half-heartedly seeking an artist, and the other is actually a very good premise which will make for an excellent novel once I'm ready to sit down and start over from the beginning. And now, of course, I also have a blog.

What I don't have is any skill at all with priority management. The stories in my head present themselves to me when they are ready to be written and no sooner than that, the average gestation period falling somewhere between fifteen minutes and seven months. The stories that I've begun to write but have stalled sit there until I, or more frequently my wife, figure(s) out why they aren't working. Ideas that take weeks to form will be written in half a day, and vice-versa. It may not seem like the most efficient way to do things, but it works quite well, and I have no desire to change it.

It is, however, very bad for a blog. You're relying on me to feed you a steady stream of entertainment and profound wisdom, and time after time I'm going to be late with the goods. It will be feast and famine, I'm afraid, and all I can do is beseech you to stay with me through the lean times, for tomorrow there will be cake.